The festival of St. Thomas was instituted in the twelfth
century, and, as an old author alleges, was assigned an early place in the
ecclesiastical calendar
from this apostle having been vouchsafed the most indisputable evidence of the
resurrection. In pictorial art, St. Thomas is represented holding a builder's
square, and in
accordance with the following legend, he is regarded as the patron saint of
architects and builders. When St. Thomas was at Caesarea, our Lord appeared unto
him, and said: 'The
king of the Indies, Gondoforus, hath sent his provost, Abanes, to seek for
workmen well versed in the science of architecture, who shall build for him a
palace finer than that of
the emperor at Rome. Behold now, I will send thee to him.' And St. Thomas went,
and Gondoforus commanded him to build a magnificent palace, and gave him much
gold and silver for
the purpose. The king went to a distant country, and was absent for two years;
and St. Thomas, meanwhile, instead of building a palace, distributed all the
treasures intrusted to
him among the poor and sick; and when the king returned he was full of wrath,
and commanded that St. Thomas should be seized and cast into prison, while he
meditated for him a
horrible death. Meantime, the brother of the king died, and the king resolved to
erect for him a magnificent tomb; but the dead man, after that he had been dead
four days, suddenly
rose, sat upright, and said to the king:
'The man whom thou wouldst torture is a servant of God;
behold, I have been in Paradise, and the angels chewed unto me a wondrous
palace of gold, silver,
and precious stones; and they said: This is the palace that Thomas the
architect has built for thy brother King Gondoforus.'
And when the king heard those words, he ran to the prison,
and delivered the apostle, and then St. Thomas said to him: 'Knowest thou not
that they who would
possess heavenly things have little care for the goods of this world! There are
in heaven rich palaces without number, which were prepared from the beginning of
the world for those
who purchase the possession thereof through faith and charity. Thy riches, 0
king, may prepare thy way to such a place, but they cannot follow thee thither.'
Like many other of the
old saintly legends, this was never meant or assumed to be a matter-of-fact
relation, but simply a parable or religious fiction, invented for the
instruction of the people, and
rendered the more impressive and striking by an exalted apostle being made the
hero of the tale.
It is said that after the dispersion of the apostles, St.
Thomas preached the gospel to the Medes, Persians, Bactrians, Ethiopians, and
Indians, among the
latter of whom he suffered martyrdom at Melapoor, and was buried in a church,
which he had caused to be erected in that city. Marco Polo, who travelled in the
thirteenth century,
says: ' In that province of Malabar, is the body of the glorious martyr St.
Thomas, the apostle, who there suffered martyrdom. It rests in a small city, not
frequented by many
merchants, because unsuited for the purposes of commerce; but, from devotional
motives, a vast number both of Christians and Saracens resort thither. The
Christians who perform
this pilgrim-age collect earth, which is of a red colour, from the spot where he
was slain, and reverentially carry it away with them, often employing it
afterwards in miracles,
and giving it with water to the sick, by which many disorders are cured. A
variety of miracles are daily performed at the tomb of St. Thomas, through the
interposition of the
blessed apostle.'
Sir John
Mandeville, in his travels, describes the same country as 'a great
kingdom containing many
fair cities and towns. In that kingdom lies the body of St. Thomas the apostle
in flesh and bone, in a fair tomb, in the city of Calamy; for there he was
martyred and buried. But
men of Assyria carried his body into Mesopotamia, into the city of Edessa; and
afterwards he was brought thither again. And the arm and the hand that he put to
our Lord's side,
when he appeared to him after his resurrection, is yet lying in a vessel without
the tomb. By that hand they there make all their judgments. For, when there is
any dissension
between two parties, and each of them maintains his own cause, both parties
write their causes on two bills, and put them in the hand of St.
Thomas; and, anon, the hand casts away the bill of the wrong
cause, and holds still the bill with the right
cause, and therefore men come from far countries to have judgments of doubtful
causes.'
The accompanying engraving, from an illumination in an
ancient manuscript of Mandeville's travels, preserved in the Biblioth�que
Imperiale of Paris,
represents the judgment of St. Thomas. And if the story be considered
incredible, the writer can only quote Mandeville's own lines addressed to
unbelievers thus:
'If scanty be my laud and praise,
And witless folk should call me liar,
For that my hook contains strange lays,
I will not storm nor burst with ire.
Let him who credits not my tales,
Travel as far as I have been,
Then, may he tell if truth prevails,
In what I say that I have seen.'
St. Thomas's Day falls on the winter solstice, the shortest
day in the year, as expressed in the following couplet:
'St Thomas gray, St. Thomas gray,
The longest night and the shortest day.'
In some parts of the country the day is marked by a custom,
among poor persons, of going a gooding, as it is termed�that is to say, making
the round of the
parish in calling at the houses of their richer neighbours, and begging a supply
either of money or provisions to procure good things, or the means of enjoying
themselves at the
approaching festival of Christmas. From this circumstance St. Thomas's Day is in
some places designated 'Doleing Day,' and in others 'Mumping [begging] Day.' In
Warwickshire, the
custom under notice used to be called going a corning, from the poor people
carrying with them a bag in which they received a contribution of corn from the
farmers.
By a correspondent of Notes and Queries, in 1857, we are
informed that the custom of 'Gooding' exists in full force in Staffordshire,
where not only the old
women and widows, but representatives from every poor family in the parish, make
their rounds in quest of alms. The clergyman is expected to give a shilling to
each person, and at
all houses a subsidy is looked for either in money or kind. In some parts of the
same county a sum of money is collected from the wealthier inhabitants of the
parish, and placed in
the hands of the clergyman and churchwardens, who on the Sunday nearest to St.
Thomas's Day, distribute it in the vestry under the name of ' St. Thomas's
Dole.' We learn also from
an-other communication of the writer just quoted, that at Harrington, in
Worcestershire, it is customary for children on St. Thomas's Day to go round the
village begging for
apples, and singing
'Wassail, wassail, through the town,
If you've got any apples, throw them down;
Up with the stocking, and down with the shoe,
If you've got no apples, money will do;
The jug is white and the ale is brown,
This is the hest house in the town.'
In return for the alms bestowed during these 'gooding'
peregrinations, it was customary for the recipients, in former times, to present
to their benefactors
a sprig of holly or mistletoe. A liberal dole was distributed at the 'great
house,' or the mansion of the principal proprietor in the parish; and at the
kitchens of all the squires
and farmers' houses, tankards of spiced-ale were kept for the special refection
of the red-cloaked old wives who made in procession these foraging excursions on
St. Thomas's Day.
It is said that the hospitality shewn on such occasions proved sometimes rather
overpowering, and the recipients of this and other charitable benefactions found
themselves
occasionally wholly unable to find their way back to their own habitations,
having been rendered, through the agency of John Barleycorn, as helpless as the
' Wee bit Wilkie'
immortalised in Scottish song.
THE 'ADVENT
IMAGES' AND THE 'VESSEL-CUP.'
In connection with the practice of 'going a gooding' on St.
Thomas's Day, described in the foregoing article, an account may here be given
of a kindred
custom which appears not yet to be extinct�that of the 'Advent Images.' These
are two dolls, dressed the one to represent the Saviour, and the other the
Virgin Mary, and during the
week before Christmas they are carried about the country by poor women, who, in
return for their exhibition, expect a halfpenny, which it is considered as
insuring the height of
ill-luck to deny. The following carol is sung on the occasion by the bearers of
the images:
The first good joy that Mary had, it was the joy of
one,
To see her own son Jesus to suck at her breast-bone;
It brings tidings of comfort and joy!
The next good joy that Mary had, it was the joy of two,
To see her own son Jesus to make the lame to go.
It brings, &c.
The next good joy that Mary had, it was the joy of
three,
To see her own son Jesus to make the blind to sec.
It brings, &c.
The next good joy that Mary had, it was the joy of
four,
To see her own son Jesus to read the Bible o'er.
It brings, &c.
The next good joy that Mary had, it was the joy of
five,
To see her own son Jesus to make the dead alive.
It brings, &c.
The next good joy that Mary had, it was the joy of six,
To see her own son Jesus to bear the crucifix!
It brings, &c.
The next good joy that Mary had, it was the joy of
seven,
To see her own son Jesus to wear the crown of Heaven.
It brings, &c.'
This custom is also termed going about with a 'vessel-cup,'
and the performers are styled 'vessel-cup singers.' The word 'vessel-cup' is
evidently a
corruption for 'wassail-cup,'and denotes the wish expressed on the occasion for
the health and happiness of the party who bestows his charity on the exhibitor
of the images. It may
here be stated that in Yorkshire only one image used to be carried about�that of
the Saviour, which was placed in a box surrounded by evergreens, and such
flowers as could be
procured at the season. The party to whose house the figure was carried was at
liberty to take from the decorations of the image a leaf or a flower, which was
carefully preserved,
and regarded as a sovereign remedy for the toothache! The following was one of
the stanzas of the quaint old carol sung by the old women who carried the image:
'God bless the master of this house,
The mistress also,
And all the little children
That round the table go.'
Not only was it considered peculiarly unlucky to refuse the
tribute claimed by the image-bearer, but it was even deemed an augury of bad
fortune if any
household was not visited by the 'Advent Images' before Christmas Eve at the
latest. The expression, 'As unhappy as the man who has seen no Advent Images,'
was at one time
proverbial in Yorkshire.
CATHERINE OF
BRAGANZA
Many other women besides queens live miserable lives, but the
insignificant possess one advantage over those nobler born�their sufferings are
unobserved and
uncommented on. The woman of rank is a subject for perpetual remark among those
of her own class, the journals of the day keep the public well informed as to
the minutest
particulars of her history, and the rabble at the corners of every street shrug
their shoulders as she passes.
Catherine of Braganza, the wife of Charles II, began life
under favourable auspices. Reared in a palace, beautiful, possessed of ample
dowry, the daughter
of one king and the wife of another, loving her husband devotedly, and not
herself unpleasing in his eyes, she must have cast no unhopeful glance into the
future; yet at that very
minute, fortune's wheel was turning. Twenty-three miserable years awaited her,
each one worse and more hopeless than the one which preceded it. The neglect of
the king, the scorn
of his mistresses, the plots of courtiers, and the laughter of the world,
combined to make the childless Catherine the most wretched of all women in her
own gay and dissolute
court.
Queen Catherine was born on the Festival of St. Catherine,
the 25th of November, in the year 1638. She arrived at Portsmouth in
May 1662, where
Charles was waiting to receive her. The marriage-ceremony was performed
privately by the archbishop of Canterbury, and also a second time, with greater
secrecy, according to the
Romish ritual; for the queen, who was a stanch Catholic, did not hold the first
bond to be valid. After staying some weeks at Hampton Court, she made her public
entry into London
on the 23
rd
of August.
'The queen,' says Evelyn, 'arrived, with a train of
Portuguese ladies, in their monstrous fardingales, or guard-infantas; their
complexions olivader, and
sufficiently disagreeable: her majesty in the same habit; her foretop long,
and turned aside very strangely. She was yet of the handsomest countenance of
all the rest, and,
though low of stature, prettily shaped; languishing and excellent eyes; her
teeth wronging her mouth by sticking a little too far out; for the rest,
lovely enough.'
Many queens have arrived in England to be hated from the
first moment of their appearance, but it was not so with Catherine. Charles had
not made the first
advances. The king of Portugal, having with difficulty recovered his crown out
of the hands of Spain, found the same difficulty in retaining possession of it.
Cromwell had driven
him to great straits, in revenge for assistance which he extended to Charles I.
France, an old ally, had recently abandoned him. Thus, by proposing a marriage
between Charles II
and the Infanta, he hoped to establish his power. On the other hand, Charles
found the marriage profitable. He procured for England the possession of two
important islands, and for
himself the acceptable present of �500,000. All this was in the usual course of
things. But the Infanta was pretty and agreeable, and a good Catholic, and
Charles good-naturedly
took a liking to her; and in this it was that her reception differed from that
of Queen Caroline, or Anne of Cleves.
But twenty-three years of annoyance embittered the
remembrance of their pleasant days. Charles, by wit and neglect, by urbanity and
threats, broke her into
her position; so that, from having treated his mistresses with disdain and
resentment, she learned to endure them with coldness, and saw the Duchess of
Cleveland a lady of the
bed-chamber with patience. Despair prompted at length a sacrifice of
self-respect, and she made them friends and confidantes; and finally, says
Burnet, 'she went about masked, and
came into houses unknown, and danced there, with a great deal of wild frolic.'
Strange to say, Charles never seems to have entertained any
serious ill-feeling towards her, though we generally hate those whom we injure.
He rejected,
with disgust, the offer of Buckingham to carry her off to the West Indies, and
procure a divorce on the plea of desertion, and despised the insinuations and
charges of several who
accused her of plotting with the Jesuits to take the king's life. And when he
was on his death-bed, and the queen, whose grief drove her to distraction, asked
pardon of her
husband, if by any chance she had ever offended him, she gained at last this one
poor consolation:
'Alas, poor woman,' he exclaimed, 'she beg my pardon! I beg
hers with all my heart.'
Catherine survived the Revolution, remaining in England till
the arrival of
the Prince
of Orange, and ultimately died at Lisbon on 21st December
1705.
THE MAIMING OF
SIR JOHN COVENTRY
A strange scene was enacted in London on the night of the
21st December 1669. Near Suffolk Street were assembled fifteen or
twenty of his
majesty's guards, mounted and unmounted, under the command of Sir Thomas Sands
and the son of the Earl of Inchiquin. From ten o'clock to two, they waited
impatiently for the coming
of Sir John Coventry, whom they expected to pass on his way home from the tavern
at which he supped. At length he came, and divining their hostile purpose at a
glance, Sir John
snatched a flambeau from his servant, and drawing his sword, placed his back
against the wall, and bravely defended himself with both weapons. He succeeded
in disabling O'Brian and
some others of his assailants, but was forced to succumb to superior numbers.
After they had disarmed him, the cowardly crew threw him down, and cutting his
nose to the bone, left
him.
This atrocious outrage was perpetrated in accordance with the
orders of the Duke of Monmouth, Coventry's professed friend; but the actual
instigator was
Charles II himself. In a parliamentary committee of Ways and Means, a motion had
been made:
'That towards the Supply, every one that resorts to any of
the Playhouses who sits in the boxes, shall pay Is.; every one who sits in the
pit, shall pay
6d.; and every other person, 3d.'
This was opposed by the court-party, on the ground that the
players were the king's servants, and a part of his pleasure. Whereupon Sir John
Coventry
pertinently, but indiscreetly, asked: Whether the king's pleasure lay among the
men or the women that acted?' This was touching Old Rowley too nearly to be
pleasant, and it did not
need much argument to persuade Charles, that if the offence was allowed to pass
unpunished, reflections on royal weaknesses would become dangerously common. And
so the king,
forgetful of obligations incurred by the fugitive Charles Stuart, determined to
make an example of Coventry, and carried out his resolve despite the
remonstrances of his brother.
Bold Andrew
Marvell could not let his pen lie idle upon such an event. In his
Instructions to a Painter,
he says:
While the king of France with powerful arms,
Gives all his fearful neighbours strange alarms,
We, in our glorious bacchanals, dispose
The humbled fate of a plebeian nose.
Which to effect, when thus it was decreed,
Draw me a champion mounted on a steed;
And after him a brave brigade of horse
Armed at all points, ready to reinforce
His; this assault upon a single man.
* * * * *
'Tis this must make O'Brian great in story,
And add more beams to Sands's former glory.'
Parliament was furious at the indignity offered to one of its
members on the very night after its adjournment, and made it the first subject
for
consideration upon re-assembling. The result of their deliberations was the
passing of an act banishing the principal actors in the affair, with a special
clause rendering them
incapable of receiving the royal pardon; while to prevent a recurrence of the
offence, the cutting, maiming, and disfiguring of any man was made felony
without benefit of clergy,
and punishable with death. The Coventry Act, as it was called, remained on the
statute-book till the year 1828, when it was repealed.
It is a curious circumstance that Pepys records the fact of
Sir William Coventry, uncle to Sir John,
meditating, about nine months previous to the outrage on his nephew, a similar
revenge to that taken by Charles. Sir William fancied that Killigrew intended to
bring him upon the
stage; and he accordingly gave the dramatist to under-stand that if any of his
actors ' did offer anything like representing him, that he would not complain to
my Lord Chamberlain,
which was too weak, nor get him beaten as Sir Charles Sedley is said to have
done, but that he would cause his nose to be slit.'
THE HALCYON DAYS
The seven days preceding, and the seven days following the
shortest day, or the winter-solstice, were called by the ancients the Halcyon
Days. This phrase,
so familiar as expressive of a period of tranquillity and happiness, is derived
from a fable, that during the period just indicated, while the halcyon bird or
king-fisher was
breeding, the sea was always calm, and might be navigated in perfect security by
the mariner. The name halcyon is derived from two Greek words: the sea & to
conceive; and,
according to the poetic fiction, the bird was represented as hatching her eggs
on a floating nest, in the midst of the waters. Dryden thus alludes to the
notion:
'Amidst our arms as quiet you shall be,
As halcyons brooding on a winter's sea.'
